


and the mother duck said

by anstaar



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, dysfunctional family dynamics, sort of character study, the personal price of empire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22428172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: in which Serg wasn’t an only child, but more remains the samea Barrayaran type of fairy-tale
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	and the mother duck said

**Author's Note:**

> part of just posting old works; implications of Serg's actions and fate, fratricide, abuse, mental health issues
> 
> also lack of proper names for artistic style/not having to come up with them

The Empress stopped leaving her bedroom five days after the Emperor’s Birthday. It took two days for anybody to notice. It wasn’t a sudden shift, she tended towards headaches and even on the days she made it out she would often retreat before her children emerged. In fact, it probably would have taken a lot longer for anyone to notice if there hadn’t been an imperial review. The entire family had heard the Emperor’s shouting (the household had pretended not to notice). The Empress never raised her voice loud enough to be heard but in the end the Emperor went unescorted. 

The children discussed the matter on the tenth day after the new status quo had been accepted. The eldest princess was of the opinion that it didn’t make much of difference. They rarely saw their mother as it was. In fact, if someone got a sudden urge to seek (and not receive) some maternal attention she was now easy to find. The second prince, his face puffy and bruised, felt that if more members of the family chose not to leave their rooms the palace would be a better place to live. No one offered any opposition to this pointed, if pointless, comment, though the second princess made the almost hopeful suggestion that without the random threats of ‘oversight’ the cook would start putting forth a better effort to which her brother muttered that she couldn’t offer worse. None of them were prone to optimism. 

School was on break and, as always, tension was high. The palace usually managed to trip along just on the edge of disaster but the Crown Prince’s presence always unsettled things, made the unsteady nature of the vehicle impossible to avoid. It probably wasn’t fair to say that the Crown Prince was the worst of them by nature, it was merely that he was the oldest and the heir and the first and the main recipient of parental attention and the rest of them had been shaped around him from the beginning. The other children had banded together against him and however terrible they were to most of the people they interacted with, they counted on each other. There might be faint memories of occasional interference of their parents (of an oldest brother not yet lost) but that’s a misty past. In the present, the sisters duck into their middle brother’s room, the older with advice and the younger with ice for his latest bruise. They’ve all learned to keep their voices low during fights, no one wanted to disturb the Emperor and getting caught by an Armsman wasn’t much better. Everyone knows how these things work. 

The only one concerned about their mother’s disappearance was the baby, but then, he was the only one still truly seeking out some parental affection. Perhaps because he has no misty memories to make the rejection cut as deep as it does the others. He sat outside her door after she forbad him entrance, crying, until she ordered one of the liegemen to take him away. He cried for a while longer while the man (who really didn’t deserve this, had never been prepared for this) tried to distract him with a few stuffed toys. The baby even overcame his terror to approach his father. The Emperor allowed him to curl up under his chair while he worked with the slight softness he reserved for his youngest. 

It was unsurprising that the baby sought out even this potentially dangerous attention. Much like Crown Prince, he was on the outside. He was too young to join his siblings’ games or talks and he was mostly out of the Prince’s attention. Besides, his status as the youngest had from the beginning granted him some extra care. After all, he wasn’t a danger. No one had ever labeled him a threat. Not like the middle brother who confessed to his older sister that he thought his birth might have been where things went wrong. Where the Crown Prince was suddenly faced with the idea that there could be a different heir. She shakes her head, already far older than she should be, and tells him that there was nothing any of them could’ve done. She doesn’t say about what. 

The Emperor never took time off. Two worlds lay within his palms and he had plenty to deal with. Cynically, some have suggested that he spent more than the required hours at work to keep away from his family, but he had made his choices long before he had a family. The empress had done her duty and been reward with nothing but emptiness and loss. She can hear the screaming in her dreams, it gets ever harder to see beyond the ghosts and so she locks herself away where she won’t have to see anything at all. 

The Guard Captain watched the royal children carefully, though he rarely intervened. It was not his place. There had been one time when it looked like a rock was going to smash down on someone’s head. There had been a restraining hand when an over excited boy had almost stabbed himself with a sabre. Mostly he just watched. The oldest princess said he was looking for madness. There was plenty of that to be found. The children grow up with nightmares of their mad uncle, but the day holds different terrors. Their mother has yet to leave her room. Their father hears the voice of his empire. Their oldest brother comes alive with the sight casual cruelty.

(The oldest princess grows colder and colder as she builds up layers of ice as the only protection she can think of; the middle prince burns hot with anger and bitterness and pain; the youngest princes dreams of being anywhere else so strongly that sometimes none of it feels real. But they don’t talk of that, they’re all they have. The baby doesn’t know any other world.) 

A man comes to do a painting of the children. Really, it was supposed to be a family shot, a sign of the strength of the succession, father to son. The genetic gifts to the empire. The empress still hasn’t left her room. The emperor isn’t home. 

It’s a good picture. It’s not an accurate one. It’s also one of the very few with all the children together. It’s easy to notice how similar they look standing there, pale and lean with dark hair and hazel eyes. The Crown Prince, soon to be married, standing tall and straight as if a protector to those gathered around him. The second prince with his new sword on his hip, looking up slightly towards his brother. The eldest princess smiling demurely. The younger princess gazing at the viewer like she’s taking all of them in. The baby with a gap-toothed grin of one not yet properly molded into the behavior expected of his family. 

Years later, he’s pretty sure he’s the only one who still has a copy. His eldest brother is dead, killed by their father in a pyre larger than even the fire in his middle brother’s chest. That brother is long dead too, at his older brother’s hand, not that anyone would admit it was anything other than an accident. The eldest princess is far away on the second continent, with never a word returned to his occasional attempts at contact. The younger princess even further – seven planets away – which, perhaps, is why she sends the occasional letter (she tells him that she thinks she understands their parents too well, he doesn’t ask what she means). Maybe that’s why he keeps the picture, a beautiful look at a family that never existed. 

It’s for them – the family that never was and the family that was - that he takes up the…throne. Takes the hands of all between his and accepts the weight of it all. For them and for the little boy with the hazel eyes (sure to grow up to be pale and lean and composed) who would have the weight of empire on his toddler shoulders if he ran. So, he is sworn in, barely old enough for the job, if there’s any age that’s old enough, and already weighed down by guilt: for the men sent to their deaths, for the sister-in-law who was always kind to him (who told him she forgave him, a last blow), for remembering his oldest brother’s moments of kindness. He seizes on Aral Vorkosigan’s political advice and listens to his Betan wife’s words even more seriously.

Once, he had four siblings, and no one else. It’s for them that he marries the kindest woman he can find and grimly forces through acceptance of the replicators and carefully scans every gene before releasing their children into the world. He was the baby, cosseted and rejected; overlooked and always watching. He saw his family; he saw how they ran. He trusts the running of the Empire to those who he believes care for it and spends his time with his children.


End file.
